– That’s the nature of such an unpredictable sport like golf: you gather eleven of the twelve members of the European Ryder Cup team in a tournament, days before the big event at Bethpage, and in the end, the banner is picked up by the last vice-captain to join the group, in this case, Alex Noren (-19).
The Swede, indeed, has won the BMW PGA Championship after defeating Adrien Saddier (-19) in the first playoff hole. Both Noren and Saddier started the final round as co-leaders and held firm, very solid, with matching cards of 68 strokes, to finish three strokes ahead of their closest pursuers, Aaron Rai (-16) and Patrick Reed (-16), and meet in a playoff that was decided in the first challenge with a birdie from Noren.
– How many times has Noren reinvented himself? He is already 43 years old, and this victory will catapult him into the top 25 in the world. But in 2014, for example, after missing the entire season due to a serious injury in both wrists, he came back stronger, even reaching World Number 8, his peak, in 2016. He had already managed and overcome other game crises before, and this year, without going any further, he also returned to competition in May after spending several months out due to injury, reaching an optimal form in August: he was 7th in the 3M Open, third in the Wyndham, won the British Masters… Luke Donald, who shares many training hours in Florida with the Swede, would have been delighted if such a streak had come a bit earlier, enough to have included him in the team. In the end, he settled for taking him as a vice-captain.
– The Nordic has two pending subjects in his career. And they are not minor subjects, that’s the truth. The first is indisputably and inexplicably the Majors. Just two top tens in forty appearances, a real anomaly for someone with such competitive ability. The second, the PGA Tour, his main circuit for a long time where he hasn’t achieved a single victory. The paths of Noren are indeed inscrutable, because then he is someone capable of winning this BMW twice and twelve times on the DP World Tour, a figure only within reach of a handful of excellent players.
– Saddier, on his part, deserves all the credit. And he deserves us to believe that he has truly reached another dimension as a player in 2025. This year he has won for the first time, but he has been stringing together three weeks (Switzerland, Ireland, and Wentworth), appearing in the weekend’s featured matches, if not Sunday’s. Today he has more than paved the way for the PGA Tour card, as he climbs to third place in the Race to Dubai with this second position. It’s impossible not to remember now the case of another Frenchman, Matthieu Pavon…
– At times it seemed this Sunday that Jon Rahm (-13) could do something very impressive, after starting with four birdies in the first six holes. A good tournament finish for him, in any case, with that final 66. He has been the best Spaniard, with the permission of an Adrian Otaegui (-13) with an Emirati passport, who this week has given a significant boost to a season that was becoming more challenging than expected.
– The tournament’s Ryder focus leaves us all a bit cold. You can’t talk about poor performance from the European team, but it’s not something to boast about either. On reflection, maybe it’s better this way (those who don’t console themselves don’t want to): let everyone feel the need to keep sharpening their instincts and game. Hovland, Fitzpatrick, and Hatton finished in fifth place, Jon was thirteenth, Aberg and Rory twentieth… It’s certainly not a disaster. The least outstanding were Lowry, Fleetwood, Rose, MacIntyre, and Hojgaard. Just in case, it seems, and if humour is allowed, they have a vice-captain capable of keeping even Scheffler in line.
